Dear Dar Al Islam,

I am privileged to be speaking to you today from Cairo's Al Azhar University, the world renowned center of Islamic scholarship. Once upon a time, Islamic science was the envy of the world over. Islamic scholars brought knowledge and faith to Europe and Asia. Informed by their centuries old faith, the greatest minds of Islam helped transform the world with their wisdom, their belief and their intellectual curiosity.

All was well until my predecessor, responding to a random act of man caused disaster on September 11, began a relentless bombing campaign that devastated the peaceful peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan. We will never know how much ancient wisdom lies buried in Usama Bin Laden's Tora Bora fortress of meditation and learning. Or how much knowledge was lost when US warplanes rained terror and death on the Baghdad offices of Saddam Hussein's Mukhbarat intelligence service.

Worse than even this senseless destruction, were the lost possibilities that my country's rash and hasty actions deprived the world of. I cannot help but think of the young men of the Taliban who will never have the chance to set foot in a classroom-- and then blow it up because it is filled with young girls. I cannot help but wonder what secrets of the universe Saddam's chemical weapons researchers might not have uncovered, had they not been brutally tortured and interrogated by American troops in Abu Ghaib.

But worst of all is the sense of alienation that has come between my people and the American people, between Muslims and non-Muslims, between the people of Cairo and Iowa, all because we have not truly listened to one another.

So I have come here with an apology. A great big apology.

I apologize first of all for our rush to judgment in the aftermath of the man-caused disaster that occurred on September 11. We may never know for certain who was behind these attacks, whether it was extremists operating out of Afghanistan and hijacking the good name of Islam to disguise their links to the CIA, or whether as my hosts have suggested, it was perhaps the Jews. We will never know.

But no attack, no amount of carnage justifies the unthinking hatred with which the American people responded to this unfortunate incident. We may never be able to fully rebuild the trust between our nations, though I hope our latest offering of billions of dollars in "security assistance" will be accepted in the degraded spirit in which it was intended.

I apologize on behalf of my nation for these war crimes which we have committed against you. Furthermore I apologize for the actions of the previous administration in falsely associating your peaceful faith with the criminal acts of renegade terrorists. Yes the previous administration repeatedly insisted that Islam is a religion of peace, and that most Muslims could not be held accountable for the acts of a small minority. But this did not go nearly far enough in distancing Muslims from terrorism.

I also apologize for our support of Israel, a policy which my administration is doing its best to terminate. I understand better than anyone else, how vital genocide and ethnic cleansing are to the Muslim faith, and that by thwarting the heartfelt desire of a billion Muslims to hold their own Holocaust, my country dealt a severe blow to your faith. I am truly sorry for that.

I must also apologize for America's custom of free speech which has often offended the world's Muslims. Please be assured that my administration is working hard to ensure that this curious custom never troubles you again. Free speech was a practice implemented by White Male Deists, at a barbaric time in our past when it was not yet understood, that true tolerance can only be maintain through relentless and rigorous censorship.

Finally I apologize for everything about us that offends you. Our failure to stone women to death for showing their faces in public. Our ice cream which occasionally has swirls that resemble the name Allah. Our military where men and women fight to defend America against you. Our general prosperity, which is something my administration is working to change. And most of all for our existence.

I am truly and very deeply sorry that some half a century ago, the founder of your Muslim Brotherhood came to America, was shocked and revolted by a sock hop, and decided to declare unending war upon us. I am so sorry about that and I surrender. There will be no more sock hops from now on. Also no more free speech. No more cartoons. No more wealth and prosperity. No more military. No more freedom of religion. No more anything.

From now on I pledge to help make sure that the next generation of Americans will be poor, backward, oppressed, ignorant, intolerant and terrified of the government-- and of course Muslim, just like you.

Thank you for allowing me to speak before you and bow to your glorious leaders. May Allah curse America.

Yours humbly

Barack Hussein Obama

"He who sets the terms of the war sets the terms of the peace."

While our focus is on the visible war against terrorists and guerrillas in which our armies are engaged in, this war is only the visible war, the tip of a great dark iceberg which reaches far beneath the surface.

The visible war we are fighting is the war that the most radical Islamists are carrying forward, it is the war that occupies the bulk of our attention, it is the only war that our leaders officially recognize -- but it is also the war that sets the terms for the invisible war happening daily on our streets, in our schools, in government, university, civil service and throughout our lives.

The visible war, the terrorist threat, the car bombings, the shootings, the riots, the stabbings are the threat under which free nations surrender themselves one piece at a time. The goal of the visible war is to make present and clear the threat. But it is the invisible war which extracts the concessions.

The invisible war is not waged with guns or bombs. It is waged with reasonable editorials, with suits and benedictions. With smiles and handshakes and reassurances. It is a salesman's pitch that goes something like this. "We want to live in peace. To be your neighbors, to attend your weddings, embrace your families and create a better world. But first this is what we want--"

The invisible war. The quiet threat that sets the terms of the peace. The "Muslim Moderates" who seem quite reasonable who come bearing a gift, the message that peace is possible, as long as the proper concessions are made to them. And of course those concessions will be followed by more concessions still. And yet more to come after.

And if those concessions are not made, the visible war will follow. There will be riots, bombings, stabbings, shooting. The growing domestic Muslim population, whose presence we are legally not permitted to object to or their deportation to call for, in countries as diverse as England, Australia, Israel, Sweden, Russia and France, will turn hostile and become a weapon in our midst.

The invisible war uses the threat of a visible war combined with the threat of the "radicalization" of the "moderate" Muslim population, positioned like self-reproducing Trojan horses within our midst, to enforce concessions in the invisible war.

While we chase terrorists around the world, their leaders and our domestic sympathizers are busy setting the terms of surrender in our own capitals and getting their way more often than not.

It is easy enough to see the template for it in the countries most seriously affected, a look at Israel, Thailand or the Philippines allows us to total up the final costs that are brought to the bargaining table as terrorist leaders are legitimized to become statesmen and terrorist populations become sovereign nations. But it is not as obvious at the beginning when the butcher's bill has yet to be toted up and the real agenda is still only a whisper in coffee houses, an ink smear on a pamphlet, a hastily recorded speech by an Imam that law enforcement refuses to take seriously. It is not until there is real blood on the streets, when years of conflict become decades of conflict and the toll wears down even the patriot and the hardened soldier, that the real surrender begins and the enemy declares victory in the invisible war.

The real threat is not so much in the visible war, murderous as it may be. The visible war may claim thousands and perhaps even millions. But it is the invisible war that destroys countries feeding them up as menu items for the Islamofascist beast. As great a threat as the terrorist is, the phony moderate Muslim is a far greater threat -- for Islamic leaders extract ten times the price of every moderate Muslim, both at home and abroad, demanding money, political power, influence, land, autonomy, positions and control in their name.

While we fight the invisible war, Islam exploits the fighting to set better terms in its own invisible war. As long as we give lip service to appeasing moderate Muslims, as long as we turn our energies to appeasement, as long as we allow ourselves and our societies to be held hostage to Muslim rage-- we allow the enemy to set the terms of the war and in doing so set the terms of our own surrender.

Word that the Obama Administration may have used its power over Chrysler's restructuring process to shut down dealerships whose owners donated to Republican candidates, while leaving open dealerships that donated to Obama is spreading across conservative blogs. But while this kind of abuse of government power is shocking, it really shouldn't be.

Government is an engine of wealth redistribution, and when it gains control of businesses, it redistributes wealth in a way that benefits its supporters. That is what government always does, no matter how it disguises it.

That is why despite all the leftist wishful thinking in the world, centrally planned economies are corrupt, inept and inefficient.

The free market operates based on profit motive. A store owner's goal is to sell products in order to earn a profit. If he provides discounts, he has to do it based on an economic incentive, for example selling at a lower cost per unit to a purchaser who buys large quantities. A store owner who sells products at a lower price to Democrats and at a higher price to Republicans, or who sells at a lower price to whites and at a higher price to blacks... is hurting his own profit margins and so is really hurting himself.

The profit motive "purifies" economic behavior in the free market to a degree. By contrast within government there is no "purifier", except the legal system, which is also controlled by the government.

A government's economic behavior is controlled by politicians who have only one goal, Patronage. Politicians gain control of resources in order to reward their supporters. This takes the form of providing government contracts or jobs to the individual supporters. It also takes the form of providing general forms of aid targeted at their base, e.g. welfare, union jobs.

When government gains control of businesses, it naturally goes into wealth redistribution mode and begins providing patronage to the supporters of the ruling party. Communist countries are a example of the system taken to its limits, with the entire economy controlled by the ruling party and wealth distributed to supporters of the party, based on their level of support and affiliation.

The more wealth the Federal government took in and gave out, the more it got into the patronage business. And that corrupted the free market and the national economy. Where individual businesses have economic disincentives for practicing discrimination or handing out wasteful contracts, the government has none.

Where individual free market profit is economic in nature, governments spend money in order to reward supporters and expand their base of support. Everything the Obama regime has done is textbook Machiavelli, but it is also the inevitable result of letting the same government that has treated the national budget as a pork barrel take holds of banks and the auto industry.

No doubt there is a long list of industries that Obama will be happy to "bail out", and by bail out, we mean of course spend billions in taxpayer owned debt to take over, carve up and hand out to their supporters.

The rape of the American auto industry by Obama and his henchmen was a classic case of a gang of politicians robbing the country blind in order to provide patronage to their backers, both at the union and the dealership level. But that is par for the course.

Obama promised to fix the capitalist arrogance of the free market with some wealth redistribution, which is a lot like a mugger telling you that he can cure your credit card debt by taking all your money. Now we're seeing just how far that mugging went and how many victims it's leaving behind. And we're not done yet.

If the initial phase was the mugging, the next phase is that the beating the mugger dished out transmitted a disease which is now in the veins of his victim. When government takes control of an industry, it immediately promotes rent seeking behavior in order to increase its own wealth and power. This naturally drives up the cost of everything, produces inferior products and adds layers on bureaucracy on top of everything.

CAFE and a big package of regulations will insure that Chrysler and GM produce cars that meet the standards of the left, and that no one will actually want to buy or drive. The government naturally will buy the cars, both for itself, and subsidize their purchase for the "disadvantaged." Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac will have an auto buddy who exists to insure the "right" of everyone to own a car, with loans to people who can't pay them, for cars they can't afford.

If Obama gets his way, the US auto industry will wind up looking like its Soviet counterpart, a government subsidized white elephant that will benefit no one but politicians and their supporters. And it will once again serve as a textbook example of what's wrong with wealth redistribution, and how absolute government power over the free market, corrupts it absolutely into patronage.

 (Note: Due to the Holiday of Shavuot, there will be no further posts until Saturday Night)

If you believe the current regime of diplomats and pundits, peace is something that can be obtained for the right price. Where peace once meant the mutual cessation of war, peace has now become something that can now be bought and sold. Put the right amount on the table and peace can be yours, the pimps of peace cry on every corner. Behind them stand their gruesome wares, the terrorists and mass murderers who will have peace with you, perhaps for a night or two, if the right price is paid. The tricks may think that peace is a long term marriage, but they know it is only a one night stand. Hudna. Ceasefire. Time enough for them to rearm and kill again.

We live now in the era of the prostitution of peace. Love doesn't enter into it. Brotherhood doesn't enter into it. We no longer have peace because we are both tired of war and wish an end to it. No, peace has become something that the brute, the thug and the monster offers to the civilized world in exchange for weapons, power and international stature. And so we no longer have peace, instead the very idea of peace has become a lost hope, a compulsive gambler's winning streak, an alky's last beer, a forlorn cause in the darkened streets of civilization's modern diplomatic dystopia.

Peace once used to be an end to violence, but now peace has become a process, a long ritual of meetings and paper shufflings that never actually produces peace, but keeps the creaky wheels of diplomacy turning. And so the men in suits come and go and photographs are taken and signed and newspaper headlines cry, "Peace, peace," but there is no peace. The diplomats who prostitute peace from Oslo to Camp David, from Taba to Ankara, know full that what they are selling is a disease ridden lie. What they are truly selling is the illusion of a rational world to the last remnants of a dying civilization confronting the savagery of a Dar Al Harb that laughs at reason and glories in savagery.
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The rain falls in the dark, the wind blows ragged newspapers down a deserted street. Munich. Camp David. Brussels. Oslo. It doesn't matter anymore, only the hotel rooms and the expensive booze at taxpayer expense poured into wineglasses. The pimps pander, the prostitutes pose with their weapons and bombs and the tricks put up everything they have certain that this time it will be different. A toast is made. "To peace!" Peace in our time. Peace in no one's time.

The prostitution of peace is a lurid cynical act, far more gruesome than the sort of crimes men and women are arrested for on civilization's streetcorners every night. For the prostitution of peace is not merely the false promise of love, it is the false promise of an end to the killing, only to enable and perpetuate it.

Leftist agitation and activism has turned peace into a meme, a lie everyone can have if they only sing loudly enough and demand it from their government. And so they die. And the leaders of their government go to the hotel rooms in distant cities and continents and buy it for them. The glasses clink, everyone cheers and in the morning there are more corpses to be swept from the streets.

The insincerity of peace is at the heart of the prostitution of peace. It is an act of irresponsibility on every side. The pimps of peace in the foreign ministries and state departments inflate their own prestige certain that the right transaction will finally win over the sheiks of the east. The prostitutes of peace grin cynically, knowing that they are not selling anything that they cannot take back tomorrow. The tricks come with a mix of corruption and despair driven by the self-destructive impulse of decay to buy something they cannot have at a price they cannot pay.

No one in this trinity of the damned wishes to hear about the moral bankruptcy of their profession or its devastating price. Again and again the price is paid and blood runs in the gutter and in the hotel rooms the glasses clink.

"To peace."

There are 5.3 million votes for Obama out there, the only problem is that they happen to belong to murderers, rapists, armed robbers and other convicts and ex-convicts.

That golden box of 5+ million votes is being unlocked by Democrats in one of two ways. The first relies on changing state laws that prevent felon voting at the state level. Their greatest success has arguably been Florida, a crucial swing state with over a million ex-felons. When Governor Charlie Crist promised to let criminals vote during the election and then implemented it once in office, the impact on the 2008 Presidential election was quite sizable.

With anywhere from 250,000 to 500,000 new votes available, the Obama campaign ran a "You can Vote Too!" registration drive for ex-felons. And since Obama won Florida by barely 200,000 votes, the newly enfranchised murderers, rapists and pedophiles no doubt did their share to help put him in the White House.

Iowa restored felon voting in 2005, and between 2004 to 2008, swung from Republican to Democratic.

In 2007 Colorado struck down the requirement that ex-felons have to at least complete their parole before becoming eligible to vote, overriding a Colorado Supreme Court ruling. In 2008 Colorado voted for a Democratic Presidential candidate for the first time in 26 years.

Virginia, which also began legalizing felon voters, became another swing state that swung unexpectedly to Obama.

While legalizing felons alone did not swing any of these states, they were part of a larger program to liberalize the voting base, which is why such laws were invariably championed by Democrats and Liberal Republicans. Bringing in millions of new votes changes the game. And that was what happened in 2008.

However giving criminals voting rights on a state by state level has been a long slow process, and that is where the second method comes in, to strike down any bans on felon voting at the Federal level.

The key argument used by felon voting advocates is that barring criminals from voting is a form of racial discrimination, since a disproportionate number of convicted felons are black or members of other minority groups. This brings in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into the picture. Using the VRA, the Supreme Court could potentially strike down any state laws banning criminals from voting. Even convicts still in jail.

This would immediately unlock that golden box of 5 million votes for Obama, even more than local state measures of ACORN's voting fraud, which relied heavily on ex-cons, did.

And the Voting Rights Act is where Judge Sotomayor comes into the picture. While the Supreme Court currently has not chosen to hear any cases involving felon voting, allowing state circuit courts to maintain the ban, Judge Sotomayor is an enthusiastic judicial advocate of applying the VRA to felon voting, treating criminals as a discriminated against group being denied their civic rights.

In Hayden vs Pataki, a case brought by Joseph "Jazz" Hayden, who stabbed a sanitation worker to death, and has since become a campaigner for letting felons vote, Judge Sotomayor dissented from the majority by arguing that the VRA in no way excludes or was meant to exclude felons.

SOTOMAYOR, Circuit Judge, dissenting:

"It is plain to anyone reading the Voting Rights Act that it applies to all “voting
qualification[s].” And it is equally plain that § 5-106 disqualifies a group of people from voting. These two propositions should constitute the entirety of our analysis. Section 2 of the Act by its unambiguous terms subjects felony disenfranchisement and all other voting qualifications to its coverage.

What that means is that Sotomayor believes that any voting qualification, including bans on having convicted murderers and rapists vote, is a violation of the Voting Rights Acts. Felons can be treated as a "group" that has been discriminated against by being banned from the right to vote.

This would allow Obama to "crack" more conservative states where felon voting enfranchisement has not made any headway, by treating felon disenfranchisement as a violation of the Voting Rights Act.

By nominating Sotomayor, Obama is very clearly looking ahead to 2012, by first nominating an Hispanic Woman, secondly a left wing judicial advocate, more specifically one whose views on ballot access will help open up that golden box of millions of votes, and in the case of a Bush vs Gore type Supreme Court case, will always argue on the side of inadequate access.

And of course Sotomayor's ruling in Ford vs McGinnis that Islamic rights for prisoners can be entirely at the whim of the prisoner, can't hurt. Nor her open position that her job is to make policy, rather than rule on the constitutionality of the laws.



Like Obama her nomination is being treated as a "historical nomination", though Justice Benjamin Cardozo was arguably the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice (who naturally doesn't count because he's Jewish), and her judicial advocacy views, her identity politics, will be treated as assets, in the same way that they were for Obama.

But the bigger picture is that Sotomayor is meant to be Obama's ace in the hole for the 2012 election.

Last year the Riverdale Jewish Center made headlines by accommodating a female Muslim exchange student's need for a prayer space during school hours. As Rabbi Rosenblatt described it, “We’re just helping to welcome somebody’s child from overseas,” an announcement that was greeted by loud applause in his congregation.

King Solomon said in Kohelet, "Cast your bread upon the waters and it will return to you after many days."

It took only a few months for the "bread" to return with a Muslim plot to bomb the Riverdale Jewish Center. Since no good deed done for Muslims goes unpunished, while the Rabbi and congregants of the Riverdale Jewish Center were congratulating themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness, their eagerness to throw open the doors of their house of prayer to an enemy, their friendly neighborhood Muslims were plotting to kill and destroy.

The murderous plot came out of a congregation, but a Muslim congregation radically different in its outlook and worldview. The Masjid Al-Ikhlas, whose name refers to purging non-Islamic beliefs from oneself. The Masjid Al-Ikhlas is run by Imam Salahuddin Muhammed, who was converted and recruited to Islam while serving a 12 year sentence for armed robbery.

The man who recruited him, Imam Umar was closely tied to Saudi backed Islamist groups and supported the attacks and the attackers of 9/11. Imam Umar, originally Wallace Gene Marks, himself had been sent to prison as part of the "Harlem 5" for conspiring to murder police officers using guns and bombs, an attack plan whose crudeness and viciousness had a great deal in common with the planned attack on the Riverdale Jewish Center.

A former member of the Nation of Islam, Marks or Umar, found his mission in recruiting convicts into Islam by working as a prison chaplain, eventually rising to Chief Muslim Chaplain in theNew York State Department of Correctional Services, a position which gave him every opportunity to convert and recruit. Imam Salahuddin Muhammed was one of his recruits. Imam Salahuddin Muhammed in turn became a prison chaplain himself, and at his mosque a number of Muslim ex-cons, some of who had found Islam behind bars, plotted their own Jihad.

Naturally the Rabbi of the Riverdale Jewish Center appeared at an event with Muslim leaders to affirm that the plans of the attackers had absolutely nothing to do with Islam. There was the usual round of interfaith handshaking and agreement that we're all the same underneath the skin. Which of course served to demonstrate how little liberal clergy learn from their attackers.

Terrorism is not a thing apart from Islam, it is based on the teachings of Mohammed and the words of the Koran. To claim that Islamic terrorism stands apart from Islam as a deviant branch, is as absurd as claiming that the Holocaust was perpetrated by people who may have been members of the Nazi party and may have been following the will of Adolf Hitler-- but Nazism and Hitler had nothing to do with the Holocaust.

Islam is based on hate, its followers are driven by the need to passively or actively destroy non-Muslim civilizations, nations and individuals. The Rabbi and congregants of the Riverdale Jewish Center believed that there was a fundamental difference between the Muslim exchange student they took in to pray in their halls, and the Muslim ex-cons who plotted to blow up the synagogue. But they were both Muslims, and hate for non-Muslims is at the heart of their belief system.

While the Center had accommodated Dinar Pupista, the Muslim exchange student, and her need for an afternoon prayer time, and the New York Times wrote it all up as a glowing testament to the willingness of Americans to accommodate Muslims... they might have done better to consider just what exactly those prayers involved.

Within a synagogue, Dinar began by facing toward Mecca. Mecca was Mohammed's second choice of a holy land, after turning away from Jerusalem because his new faith was rejected by the Jewish population. Mohammed managed to compensate for that by wiping out the Jewish population of Mecca. His followers would go on to seize the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and frequently bar Jews from even worshiping at the Western Wall. There oriented toward the Masjid Al Haram, the Mosque of Mecca, whose Imam called Jews "Pigs and Monkeys", she would begin her prayers.

When Dinar prayed Asr, the Islamic afternoon prayer, she would recite a sentence which reads as, "Guide us to the Straight Way. The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians)"

While the Riverdale Jewish Center's congregants and staff were patting themselves on the back for their tolerance, the hapless Muslim exchange student would be participating in a daily ritual of hate within their synagogue walls. And cursing them in the process.

The difference between Dinar and the Bronx Jihadis was that they tried to take action based on the hate for Jews embedded in Islam. Dinar by contrast will likely never go beyond using her mandatory Zakat donations to help fund terrorist groups such as Hamas. That is what many fallaciously assume to be difference between the moderate and extremist Muslim. In fact it is the difference between the passive and the active Muslim.

Despite the differences between Sunni and Shia, between the preaching styles and public face that some Muslim mosques show, there is only one true congregation within Islam, the Congregation of Jihad.

Tolerance toward Islam means tolerance toward hate. That hate may or may not morph into actual violence, but there is no reason to be surprised when it does. A Muslim trying to bomb a synagogue is no more aberrant, than a Klansman trying to bomb a black church. Both are acting on their hateful beliefs. The difference is that no black church would be foolish enough to invite a Klansman in, (unless he happened to be a prominent Democratic Senator), but liberal clergy, both Jewish and non-Jewish, roll out the welcome mat for Muslims all the time... little understanding the kind of hate they are welcoming inside.

Tolerance toward an evil ideology, whether it is Islam or Communism, Nazism, Satanism or Scientology, legitimizes it and gives it a foothold. Those who show tolerance toward Islam become accomplices in their own destruction. Because there is only one Islam, the Congregation of Jihad, the sword raised over the neck of the infidel, the Jihadis ranging across the Dar Al Harb to throw it down and replace it with the Dar Al Islam.

(Addendum: Soccer Dad reminds me that Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt was part of a delegation of liberal Rabbis who traveled to Washington in 1995 to lobby for aid to the PLO. Naturally that aid money went to fund terrorism against Israelis, and the private bank accounts of Arafat and the rest of his gang.)

When early in the 20th century Germany faced a variety of complex economic, military and political problems, the Nazi propaganda organ, "Der Sturmer" boiled them down to a simple message, "Die Juden sind unser Ungluck". In a flash, Germany's defeat in WW1, the worldwide economic depression and its political turmoil could all be blamed on the Jews. And of course if the Jews were gone, everything would be alright in Germany again.

That same message has dominated the diplomatic and political rhetoric on the Middle East, with American and European diplomats, pundits and politicians claiming that the problems in the Middle East would be healed if only it wasn't for Israel. This latest echo of, "Die Juden sind unser Ungluck" in regard to the Middle East blames the existence of Israel for the general instability, violence and terrorism in the Middle East. An accompanying illustration naturally features a Der Sturmer caricature of a Jewish "lobbyist" controlling American foreign policy.

If you were to believe this Sturmeresque critique of what's wrong in the Middle East, if we simply removed the tiny state of Israel, 1/80th the size of Iran. Islamic terrorism would go the way of the Dodo, women and religious minorities would have rights and Europe, America and the Muslim world would be able to join hands and sing Kumbaya.

If only it wasn't for Israel.

Never mind that much of the actual instability comes from the fact that the map of the Middle East was a clumsy colonial hodgepodge of imaginary states with ancient names, ruled by bandits and warlords, styling themselves Kings and Emirs. Virtually every ruling house in the Middle East that was backed by the England, France or the US... is despised by their own populations.

The Egyptian and Iraqi monarchs were deposed. The regime of the Shah was overthrown. Their replacements, Nasser and Saddam, were Soviet allied and anti-American thugs and dictators. This had nothing to do with Israel, and everything to do with the fact that the same Western foreign ministries now blasting Israel, tried to rule the Middle East through weak and unpopular governments. Something the USSR was happy enough to take advantage of.

It was a problem that recurred in Asia with spectacularly deadly results and two devastating wars involving the United States. All without Israel ever being in the area. Indeed without Israel ever being located there, the same pattern of Marxist dictatorships and Muslim terrorists have rampaged through the region.

This did not prevent Gandhi from regurgitating his own version of "Die Juden sind unser Ungluck", arguing that India would be at peace, if the Muslims were just allowed to have Jerusalem. Yet despite the Jordanian seizure of East Jerusalem, Partition went ahead anyway, not to mention the bloodbaths in Bangladesh, Kashmir and East Timor. Or the current nuclear standoff between Pakistan and India. Thus far no one has tried to claim that the problem could be resolved by Israel giving up its capital.

But the spectacular dishonesty of insisting that Israel is the cause of the Middle East's instability goes on. Somehow Shia and Sunni would have stopped fighting each other, Syria would stop dreaming of conquering Lebanon for good, Saddam would have never tried for Kuwait, and the Saudis wouldn't be pouring all their resources into promoting Islamism abroad-- if only it wasn't for Israel.

Yet if anything Israel has served as a stabilizing factor, creating buffer zones between many of the Arab regimes that would otherwise be doing their best to swallow each other. Israel was the only reason Syria hadn't taken Lebanon and Jordan. Instead Arab nations have been forced to stage their conquests in a direction away from Israel, witness Egypt going West to Yemen, or Syria nibbling away at Lebanon, without being able to take the whole thing in one bite.

The squabbling Arab League has only one common interest, and that is Israel. The barest fragments of Arab unity are directed around Israel. It has actually been pressure to make peace with Israel that has been far more destabilizing, than the presence of Israel itself.

Too much of the world has swallowed the Arab argument that Israel is all that stands in the way regional stability, the same argument that Hitler made over Czechoslovakia. The Peace Process has been an attempt to stabilize the region by creating a terrorist state run first by Arafat, and now by his successors and Hamas. This "Experiment in Terror" has not brought stability, on the contrary it has increased terrorism and spread instability... something for which Israel is paradoxically being blamed.

But that is the whole point of "Die Juden sind unser Ungluck", to distill a complex set of problems, into a single bigoted tautology. Whether in Germany or the Middle East, it is easier to blame the Jews, than to address the real problems. Nazism and Islamism were both violent reactionary responses to real social problems. The Muslim world, like post-WW1 Germany, has experienced humiliating defeats in war and responded with irrational violence and hate, backed by a paranoid mythology of persecution. And those who cannot learn from their mistakes find it much easier to brandish a Koran or Mein Kampf, and cry for the death of the infidels.

And as in the Pre-WW2 period, too many in the West have bought into the victimology of the sociopathic mass murderers and the idea that conceding a country or two to them, might buy us "peace in our time".

Now some 70 years after Munich, Barack Hussein Obama is pressuring Israel to let itself be carved up in order to appease Islamic terrorists, claiming that the solution to the Middle East's problems lie through Israel. 130 years after a liberal politician coined the phrase, "Die Juden sind unser Ungluck", Western liberals are back to reducing a complex series of regional problems to the "Jewish Question".

This past week was dominated by Obama's attempt to take it easy on Islamic terrorists, clashing with the desire of Congressional Democrats to avoid being implicated as soft on terrorism. Obama has to know that he can't win over most Americans with a debate over Gitmo. Going soft on terrorism appeals to only a limited demographic, even within the Democratic party.

Closing Gitmo is a major gamble. The way Obama sees it, he can hope that no terrorist attacks successfully take place in the United States between now and 2010-2012. Considering how much damage has been dealt to Al Queda, and Al Queda's interest in keeping Obama and his weak on terror policies in office, this might be a gamble he can pull off, and use amateurs like the Muslim Con Bronx Bombers to argue that the conventional criminal justice system approach works fine when it comes to terrorism.

What that kind of argument really does is revert America to a 9/10 mentality, when the FBI managed to bust some terrorists now and then, just not the ones that really counted.

In the War on Terrorism, the terrorists just have to get through once. We have to catch them every time. That's why the porous approaches of the criminal justice system may work fine when it comes to dealing with crime by Americans. It maintains high standards of proof and protection for Americans, which is what any system meant to serve Americans should do.

However when it comes to terrorism, maximizing protection for Americans, means minimizing it for foreign terrorists.

That's the fundamental difference between criminal justice and national defense. Criminal justice takes place on the civic level. National defense is a thick skin keeping enemies out at any cost.

That's why the police don't deploy jets to bomb Detroit when there's a gang war, but the US military does deploy jets to bomb enemy targets. National defense and criminal justice are two fundamentally different things and require different approaches.

Terrorist attacks planned and executed by global terrorist groups are not criminal acts, they're tactical operations funded, implemented and executed by enemies of the United States using trained operatives. It is as ridiculous to argue that the justice system should handle terrorists, as it is to argue that the police should go to Afghanistan and bring Osama Bin Laden to justice.

Most people would understand the manifest absurdity of the latter. But the former is equally and just as absurd.

American standards derive from the responsibilities of government, which exist only for the benefit of American citizens as part of a direct social contract. They are not a form of absolute morality that supersedes that social contract. So regardless of how repugnant some politicians and pundits may find waterboarding, there is no reason whatsoever to toss it overboard. The American legal system was created to give the benefit of the doubt to Americans. The United States military was created to protect Americans by measures far more ruthless than are allowed to any police force.

The criminal justice system is built full of holes on the principle that it is better to weigh the odds toward freeing the guilty, than imprisoning the innocent. But applying that same system to enemy combatants is a blatant misapplication of the purpose for which it was intended.


The legal system is intended to clarify the guilt or innocence of the defendant, and then apply a punishment or release the defendant. This entire process has no relevance to terrorists, where our goal should be to extract information from captured terrorists. Certainly the usual "tools" for doing that with organized crime are not going to be particularly helpful. Offering reduced sentences to people willing to die in order to kill Americans is likeliest to earn belly laughs, rather than actionable intelligence.

Meanwhile all this puts the United States in the absurd position of seizing people who were never within United States borders and then trying them under US criminal codes that they never explicitly or implicitly agreed to abide by. Criminality is judged based on compliance or non-compliance with the law. A terrorist leader in Afghanistan is not guilty because he is in violation of our laws, he is guilty of making war on us, without abiding by the laws of war.

Terrorists are not criminals. We are not trying to capture or kill them because they broke the law, but because they made war on us. That fundamental distinction is at the heart of the leftist misunderstanding of the War on Terror. The terrorists are entirely aware of the fact that they are fighting a war against us. They base this war on the legal codes found in their Koran. It is only on our side that there is any doubt about it being a war.

Many lawyers naturally argue that terrorists belong in their jurisdiction, but then lawyers have a tendency to view the playing field of the legal system as being virtually unlimited. And there are plenty of European models to show what kind of ridiculous nonsense results from the unlimited jurisdiction of the legal system, from giving human rights to the great apes (Spain) to suing foreign countries over actions committed outside their borders (Belgium) to criminalizing the Bible (Sweden) to ruling on whether a prize should be withdrawn to a recipient because of his patriotism (Israel).

The bottom line is that there is no reason to apply the civil protections of the justice system to enemy combatants. It will not deter terrorists. It is not the best way of gaining intelligence from terrorists. It will not protect captured US troops, (in fact knowing that their own captured terrorists have their rights protected by a legal system is a formula for giving them the confidence to abuse US troops without worrying about retaliation in kind), and it will not win the hearts and minds of anyone, especially as the terrorists are trained to manufacture stories of being tortured anyway.

When Obama argues for closing Gitmo and letting the criminal justice system tackle the problem, he's waving the white flag in the War on Terror, and surrendering the initiative to the terrorists and their lawyers. With 1 in 7 released terrorists already known as reoffenders, with the Al Queda chief in Yemen an ex-Gitmoite, with terrorists in civilian custody having already blinded one corrections officer in an escape attempt-- the entire project is doomed from the start.

Most of all it ignores the reason why we're in this in the first place. To stop terrorist attacks on the United States and destroy the terrorist network. The best way to do that is not through the same criminal justice system which failed to deal with the terrorist conspiracies in the United States pre- 9/11, but through the same post 9/11 system which succeeded in dismantling much of Al Queda. That is the protection that the United States government owes Americans.

This week has been dominated by Obama's attempt to take it easy on Islamic terrorists, clashing with the desire of Congressional Democrats to avoid being implicated as soft on terrorism. The Gitmo defeat was all the more shocking, because as far as the press was concerned Obama was never supposed to lose. Nor was anyone supposed to point out that he had no real plan and that his proposals were completely unfocused and lacking in elementary details.

Naturally Obama's response was to deliver a high profile speech, long on the sort of vague rhetoric Hollywood has been featuring for a while now in movies and TV shows about terrorism, that amounts to a call for letting the same old criminal justice system handle it.

Of course Obama has only two crisis modes

A.) Give a speech that's full of high minded rhetoric and has no practical proposals to offer.

B.) Go on an international trip.

It's particularly embarrassing when former Vice President Cheney's numbers are actually going up in response to his challenges to Obama's terrorism policies. This after the left had spent 8 years caricaturing Cheney as a monster.

But Cheney is the only high profile Republican politician actually challenging Obama. Most of the heavy lifting until has been done by voices in the blogsphere and talk radio. The media has meanwhile been giving a lot of airtime to liberal Republicans to come out and endorse Obama's policies.

Giving Cheney airtime was meant to backfire on the Republican party, instead it backfired on the media and their Savior in Chief.

Obama has to know that he can't win over most Americans with a debate over Gitmo. Going soft on terrorism appeals to only a limited demographic, even within the Democratic party.

And Cheney will hopefully point the way for GOP Presidential hopefuls to begin speaking out a more loudly. Because Obama is weak on terrorism. And that weakness can be successfully exploited.

The average American expects results from the White House, but this is not a results oriented administration... at least not results that will benefit Americans.

Obama has stated,

"Seeking to defuse one of Republican's most potent arguments, the president added: "Let me begin by disposing of one argument as plainly as I can: we are not going to release anyone if it would endanger our national security, nor will we release detainees within the United States who endanger the American people."

But of course Obama began with a lie. In fact released terrorists from Gitmo routinely return to practicing terrorism.

An unreleased Pentagon report concludes that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are engaged in terrorism or militant activity, according to administration officials.

The Pentagon promised in January that the latest report would be released soon, but Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said this week that the findings were still “under review.”

Two administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the report was being held up by Defense Department employees fearful of upsetting the White House, at a time when even Congressional Democrats have begun to show misgivings over Mr. Obama’s plan to close Guantánamo.

Naturally. But what it all comes down to, is that releasing terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, means releasing dangerous terrorists into the wild, where they will be returning to terrorism.

The Pentagon said on Tuesday that 61 former detainees from its military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, appear to have returned to terrorism since their release from custody.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said 18 former detainees are confirmed as "returning to the fight" and 43 are suspected of having done in a report issued late in December by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Morrell declined to provide details such as the identity of the former detainees, why and where they were released or what actions they have taken since leaving U.S. custody.

"This is acts of terrorism. It could be Iraq, Afghanistan, it could be acts of terrorism around the world," he told reporters.

Or it could be acts of terrorism right here in the US. Gitmo has served as a training course for many of the detainees, giving them constant access to Americans and to American culture. That will serve them well in any future operations.

Naturally the press is trying to spin this by claiming that the Gitmo terrorists are returning to terrorism, because of how "badly" they were treated in Gitmo. Which is a lot like claiming that a released pedophile only began molesting kids because of his time in prison.

And then there's the Ex-Gitmo jolly fella, who instead of taking a job writing editorials for the New York Times, became Yemen's Al Queda Terror Chief

-The emergence of a former Guantanamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda's Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen's capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

His status was announced in an Internet statement by the militant group and was confirmed by an American counterterrorism official.

So when Obama claims, "we are not going to release anyone if it would endanger our national security", he's lying through his shiny teeth and he knows it. Releasing terrorists means endangering our national security.

Meanwhile two Democratic Congressmen, McGovern and Delahunt, with well known terrorist sympathies, are calling for Gitmo folks to come over here and join us.

Two lawmakers of President Barack Obama's Democratic Party appealed Thursday to let Uighurs locked up at Guantanamo Bay move to the United States, saying they were victims of injustice.

US authorities four years ago cleared 17 imprisoned Uighurs -- members of a largely Muslim group in northwestern China who the State Department says face worsening persecution by Beijing.

But they are stuck at Guantanamo Bay due to fears that Beijing would torture them if they return. The United States has asked Germany, home to a large Uighur community, to take them in.

"We cannot expect the world to miraculously resolve this problem of our own making," Congressman Jim McGovern said.

"It is not enough, quite frankly, to ask that they be placed in Germany or in some other European country. I believe that we have an obligation to resettle at least some of the Uighurs here in the United States."

He and other lawmakers were addressing a world assembly of Uighurs, including dissident leader Rebiya Kadeer, who were meeting at the US Capitol in a bid to showcase their international support.

"Despite all of our words and our resolutions, we have let you down and we have put America's judicial system and our moral standing in the world at risk," said Bill Delahunt, like McGovern a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts.

"The Uighur people are not enemies of America. In fact, I know you admire our fundamental ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," he said....

Naturally. Maybe they can run for President too. Why not?

Meanwhile Netanyahu is revealing some of Obama's demands. One of them demanded that the UN flag fly over the Kotel, or the Western Wall, which is the holiest site in Judaism.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu vowed at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem Thursday night that the Israeli flag will continue to fly over the Western Wall (Kotel). The first prime minister in years to appear at the venerable yeshiva on Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day), he ignored U.S. President Barack Obama’s apparent trial balloon that he wants to see the United Nations flag fly over the Old City holy sites.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II said the president put forward the proposal during his visit to the White House last month.

Prime Minister Netanyahu declared, "The flag that flies over the Kotel is the Israeli flag... Our holy places, the Temple Mount -- will remain under Israeli sovereignty forever.”

In his short but enthusiastic speech at the yeshiva, where an Arab terrorist slaughtered eight young students slightly more than a year ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu repeated his “Undivided Jerusalem” message.

The packed study hall of the yeshiva interrupted Prime Minister Netanyahu’s short speech several times with applause. The first clap of hands was in response to the statement that Israel’s capital “never will be divided again.” Jerusalem Day marks the day in the Six Day War upon which the Israel Defense Forces liberated the eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem from Jordanian rule.

It's a good beginning for Netanyahu in defying Obama.

In the blogsphere roundup, NeoCon Express looks at the consequences of Obama's election and the impact on Israel's ability to maintain its air force

The Obama administration has imposed obstacles on Israeli efforts to procure U.S.-origin fighter-jets. Over the last few months, the administration has rejected a series of Israeli requests regarding modifications of the F-35. They included Israeli electronic warfare systems and acquisition of U.S. software codes that would allow Israel to repair the aircraft's central computer. The U.S. refusal meant that the Israel Air Force would be forced to send the F-35 to the United States for any repairs, a process that could take months.

The sources said the State Department has been delaying Israeli requests for pre-export licenses required for an examination of the new generation F-15. The sources said the administration has not approved the new F-15 for the Foreign Military Sales program. They said this could prevent Israel from using U.S. military aid to purchase the aircraft from Boeing. "This is a legal issue," a source said. "The F-15SE might not qualify for FMS."

Debbie Schlussel looks at Obama's demands for segregating Jews

Remember when Black people couldn't live in certain neighborhoods? If you're a liberal Kennedy, you don't need to remember, because the time is now. Several of the Kennedy family homes have restrictive covenants forbidding the sale of the homes to Blacks (and some of them to Jews, too).

Well, no wonder the Kennedys liked Barack Obama for President. He's buying into the restrictive covenant and redlined neighborhood idea . . . but in another country.

Yup, Barack Hussein Obama--a Black President, whose own father--had he grown up in America, would be shut out of owning a home in certain neighborhoods--is now pushing bigoted ethnic-based housing policies on Israel.

He says, "no Jews can live here," about portions of Israel that were the ancient grounds of Jewish history, portions of Israel where the Jewish patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--and Joseph, though Palestinians destroyed his tomb--are buried.

in Israel

Maggie's Notebook has part of a speech by the widow of Andrei Sakharov, which serves as a reminder of what real human rights activism means.

…They say people are coming together -- but in reality, they are growing apart. And that isn’t because an economic depression suddenly burst forth, and swine flu to boot. [It] began on September 11, 2001. At first, anger and horror was provoked by the terrorists who knocked down the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and by their accomplices in London, Madrid and other cities, and by the shahids, suicide bombers who blew themselves up at public spaces like discotheques and wedding parties, whose families were rewarded $25,000 each by Saddam Hussein.

Later, Bush was blamed for everything, and as always, the Jews -- that is, Israel… So it is about Israel and the Jews that I will speak... At one time, the Nobel Peace Prize was the highest moral award of our civilization. But after December 1994, when Yasser Arafat became one of the three new laureates, its ethical value was undermined. I haven’t always greeted each selection of the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Storting with joy, but that one shocked me. And to this day, I cannot understand and accept the fact that Andrei Sakharov and Yasir Arafat, now posthumously, share membership in the club of Nobel laureates.

In many of Sakharov’s publications… [he] wrote and spoke about Israel. I have a collection of citations of his writing on this topic. If it were published in Norway, then many Norwegians would be surprised at how sharply their contemporary view of Israel differs from the view of Sakharov. Here are several citations from Sakharov: …

“All wars that Israel has waged have been just, forced upon it by the irresponsibility of Arab leaders.” “With all the money that has been invested in the problem of Palestinians, it would have been possible long ago to resettle them and provide them with good lives in Arab countries.”

But of course the organized human rights activists who draw six figure salaries for waging lawfare on behalf of detained Al Queda terrorists, have no interest in what she has to say.

Gates of Vienna has a look at Kosovo and the succeeding Islamic invasion of Europe from the renowned Fjordman

Palestine and Kosovo must be seen in the context of the third invasion of Islam into Europe. The first invasion in the 8th century had taken Europe by assault from the southwest, colonized the Iberian Peninsula and attempted to take over Gallic France until it was arrested by Charles Martel in 732. The Spanish reconquista which took centuries to reclaim that land, was not completed before the end of the 15th century, at the very same time that the second invasion of the Ottomans, this time from the south-east, swept through the Balkans and eventually made headway to the gates of Vienna. But that invasion, too, was finally repulsed. The retrieval of the lands once ruled by Islam (Andalusia, Palestine, the Balkans and Kashmir) is a matter of the highest priority from the Islamic point of view.

Attacking India or the European Union by Islam outright is too risky. Therefore attention is centered on the easier targets of Palestine and the Balkans, with Andalusia, Sicily and Kashmir in the second stage. For the rest of Europe a new tactic of soft invasion, by immigration and demographic explosion, has already yielded impressive results: within one generation, 30 million Muslims have taken a foothold in Europe.

And the invasion has only begun. Everything happening in Europe now is only the beachhead. Israel provides a good show of what the next phase will look like, something we're seeing only glimpses of in France now.

Avid Editor looks at coming terrorist attacks, particularly those aimed at Jewish centers

Jihad Watch parses Obama's terrorism speech

Lemon Lime Moon has a limerick on Islamic terrorism to close off the weekend

He was promised young girls from the east--
"72" said they at the least!
He was martyred one day
by his enemies they say
ending up with just one horrid beast.

The patterns of a failed state are all too familiar from the Soviet Union, and every "Democratic People's Republic" from Cuba to North Korea . The government controls everything and the people control nothing. The largest employer is the government and its vast bureaucracy, while free enterprise is criminalized.

The government constantly announces new initiatives, plans and policies, which do nothing but breed more poverty and misery. An ever watchful government is constantly obsessed with domestic unrest, certain that if they can suppress opposition views, no one will notice how badly everyone but the government officials and the criminals live.

And now it's all coming to America.

Want to buy a pickup truck? Pretty soon you might not be able to. You will however be able to buy lightweight cars jointly owned by the government and the worker's union that will peel open if you sneeze on them. (If nothing else, Obama will be remembered for turning the American auto industry into the Yugo and the Lada.)

Because the government knows best. Always. And who needs small businesses anyway? Unless you qualify for Small Business affirmative action quotas, which entitles you to cut in line when bidding on government contracts, you have no business running a small business anyway.

But don't worry, you will be able to buy a small assortment of overpriced products from the remaining industries, underfunded by government loans and grants, with prices artificially inflated by cap and trade and all the other fun taxes. Forget the old kind of big business. The new kind of big business doesn't actually make money, instead it's subsidized by the government, which it has to be because it's so heavily taxed and the prices passed down to consumers are so awful, that there's no way for it to turn an actual profit. And of course forget about product quality. When your union owns the company, no one cares about product quality.

Naturally the government will step in to regulate excessive prices to protect the citizenry, artificially lowering the prices for some staples, and applying more "sin taxes" to anything the government doesn't like, including fattening foods and owning an antiquated gas guzzler. This is a formula for creating shortages, as Chavez has most recently demonstrated for us. And shortages mean a crisis... and we wouldn't want to waste one of those.

Is this a farfetched vision of the future or a probable vision of the present? We'll find out soon enough.

In the Obama Administration, "efficiency" is the new poverty, implementing controls and regulations that leave people with less than ever before. In the name of environmental efficiency, the American people are to be deprived of transportation, deprived of jobs, deprived of income and deprived of freedom.


The disastrous failures of FDR and Carter's attempts at implementing price controls highlight what is to come. But to social liberals, an economic downturn has always been a perfect storm of an opportunity to seize control of the free market in order to fund the construction of their socialist infrastructure.

Now the environment has provided a "moral structure" to enforce political change, and to proceed with the impoverishment of America. The environment is of course a perfect justification for just about anything, since any worsening of the human condition serves to "benefit the environment", right down all the way to genocide, or its more euphemistic cousin, Zero Population Growth.

Efficiency has come to be a euphemism for deprivation, and community, for a welfare state. And the more the government does, the more it controls, and the more it controls, the more it imposes its dictates. National health care will mean a government that feels more entitled than ever to dictate every detail of how you live your life, right down to the food you can eat.

Environmentalism however goes beyond even that, providing carte blanche for government control and oversight over every human activity, in the name of a mythical global crisis that doesn't actually exist. Want to take a plane trip? If the environmentalists have their way, you'd better have a good "approved" reason for it. Vacation? Family reunion? You know you're limited to one of those a year. Better not try a second flight. You won't want your selfishness to destroy the environment, now do you?

And with a government bureaucracy busy regulating everything, there will be more jobs for the regulators, and less jobs for the regulated. And the welfare state that was predicted in the 70's, in which everyone would be either collecting welfare, or dispensing welfare, will have come to pass.

The cheerful comeback of the same policies Carter pushed of course can only bring poverty and misery, turning America into a failed state. Rationing in the name of the environment, government control in the name of economic stabilization and equality, have already done serious damage to the American economy. More control will squash it entirely, moving us on the socialist express to economic oblivion.

And of course the worse things get, the tighter government control becomes in order to "compensate" and "stabilize" some more, like a drunk driver who keeps hitting the gas, under the intoxicated impression that if he just keeps going faster, the world will stop turning around him. And he won't stop, until he crashes and crashes hard.

The more the government controls, the less productive the American economy becomes. And since expanding government bureaucracy is a parasite that consumes wealth without producing it, the economics of the situation can only trend downward.

Thus government gains power at the expense of Americans. The government bureaucrat rises. The ordinary American sinks down. Power shifts permanently from the citizens to the system. And the best way to make that power shift permanent is to eliminate any possibilities for independence from government control.

Transforming America into a failed state means putting the final nail in the coffin of American freedom. We can either have an economy based on individual liberty or one based on centralized government control. We've struggled through with a hybrid fusion of the two for a while now, but a hybrid system will tug one way or another.The current crisis has been exploited to draw us into the socialist quagmire. And the American economy is sinking in.

Israel knows it needs to coordinate its strategy on Iran with other nations and that attacking Teheran's nuclear facilities would mean "big trouble," CIA director Leon Panetta said on Wednesday.

"Yes," he said, "the Israelis are obviously concerned about Iran and focused on it. But [Netanyahu] understands that if Israel goes it alone, it will mean big trouble. He knows that for the sake of Israeli security, they have to work together with others."

Jerusalem Post

Yes, Big trouble indeed. Bigger trouble than a nuclear device exploding over Israel at the cost of millions of lives.

But much the same message has been delivered by both Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates. When Netanyahu came to Washington to talk Iran, he got repeated demands that Netanyahu instead implement the ethnic cleansing of Jewish towns, in what the U.N. considers occupied territory. With Hillary Clinton explicitly forbidding "Natural Growth", which refers to children growing up, getting married and living in the same towns as their parents do...

Obama's answer to Israel's concerns over its survival, is to demand the ethnic cleansing of Jews from parts of Israel. He might as well have gone whole hog and delivered it in a speech in Berlin for Holocaust Memorial Day.

Only if Israel somehow prevents Jewish boys and girls from growing up and getting married and living in a place the Beloved Leader does not approve of... will Obama and his minions be prepared to work together on Iran. And this is what he means by working together.

Netanyahu also discussed Iran with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said.

"The Secretary reiterated President Obama's commitment to try to engage Iran and offer incentives to persuade them to change course in order to become a full-fledged member of the international community," Morrell said.

"However, should Iran rebuff the U.S. initiative, the Secretary told the Prime Minister there would be serious consequences, including much stronger international sanctions,"

So after the endless diplomatic initiatives and the Iranian stalling, there might actually be sanctions... if the international community approves of them. And by the time this whole circus is done, Tel Aviv might well be a radioactive cinder. Meanwhile Kim Jong Il just fell off his chair laughing at the entire charade.

Obama's whole line of "Don't Attack Iran, Attack the Settlements" should begin to get through to any Jew who voted for him, just what Obama's real policy on Israel is.

Meanwhile just in case Netanyahu gets any ideas about attacking Iran, the Obama Administration is obstructing Israel from access to advanced fighter plane technology.

The Obama administration has imposed obstacles on Israeli efforts to procure U.S.-origin fighter-jets.

Administration sources said the White House has drafted measures that could prevent Israel and other non-NATO allies from procuring U.S. fighter-jets, including the F-35. They said the administration would require that Israel obtain special permission from the Defense Department and State Department to acquire the Joint Strike Fighter.

Over the last few months, the administration has rejected a series of Israeli requests regarding modifications of the F-35. They included Israeli electronic warfare systems and acquisition of U.S. software codes that would allow Israel to repair the aircraft's central computer. The U.S. refusal meant that the Israel Air Force would be forced to send the F-35 to the United States for any repairs, a process that could take months.

The bottom line here of course is to sideline any Israeli plans for an air strike against Iran and spread anxiety and uncertainty through Israel's air command. The message is that Israel is out of the loop now. It's a message that Netanyahu got loud and clear on his visit to D.C.

All Iran has to do now is follow the North Korean playbook, stall for time, agree to meaningless negotiations, take in aid money from the US... while moving its nuclear program full speed ahead. And any Israeli move against Iran will mean that it will be accused of fomenting war and opposing a peaceful diplomatic resolution.

Meanwhile Israel's only option is to plan and execute an air strike against Iran's extensive nuclear facilities, that will be kept secret from everyone, including the US forces in the region, and the extensive surveillance infrastructure, including satellites, drones and all intelligence sources. Should Israel's planes be detected, the odds are good that they would either be challenged to turn back, or if word reaches the White House or some of Obama's new Pentagon people, Iranian forces would get an early warning of the strike.

The challenges involved in such an operation are incredible, but Netanyahu's visit was a formality that confirmed that Israel has no other options on the table. The Obama alternative is nothing more than to play footsie with Mahmoud until Iran has the nuclear capabilities to blackmail any other players in the region, including the US, and to destroy Israel.

This is a problem that has been developing for a long time, because of the US failure to stop the chain of proliferation. That chain began with nuclear secrets being passed to the USSR. With the fall of the USSR, nuclear proliferation went out of control. The Clinton Administration took no serious steps against the nuclear proliferation coming out of North Korea. That failure brought nuclear weapons to Pakistan, setting the stage for a potential nuclear exchange with India that may cost hundreds of millions of lives.

If Iran develops nuclear weapons, the next stage in the chain of proliferation will be the many terrorist groups controlled and backed by Iran. It will not be a matter of "if" terrorists get access to a suitcase nuke... but when.

Iran will be able to kill millions anywhere from New York to Jerusalem, without getting the official blame for it. Meanwhile Iran's long range missiles will be used for nuclear blackmail against regional Arab powers, and of course to keep any threatened US intervention at bay.

Though the Arab world had ignored Israel's own secret nuclear arsenal, knowing that they were defensive weapons of last resort, not offensive weapons-- Iranian nuclear development has helped touch off a rash of nuclear programs in the region. Everyone from Egypt to Libya to Saudi Arabia wants their own nukes. And even for those who don't care whether Israel lives or dies, might want to contemplate what the consequences of a nuclear exchange between Egypt and Iran might look like, the resulting effect on Europe, which isn't that far away, or the impact on an oil based economy.

And that's what it comes down to. Obama has made it clear that not only will he not take any action to stop Iran, but he is doing what he can to prevent Israel from taking action against Iran's developing nuclear capabilities.

This comes even as the Obama Administration is tearing down research into next generation anti-missile defense systems and inviting Russia to join a missile defense umbrella for Europe... that was developed to defend against Russian nuclear blackmail. This is not an administration that is interested in the security and safety of the United States or Europe, let alone Israel. It is guided by dogmatic left wing politics that see American security as the problem, not the solution.

Each failure to cut the chain of nuclear proliferation has resulted in disastrous consequences. Now with only a single step separating terrorists from nuclear weapons, the next terrorist attack on America may not claim 3,000 lives... but 3,000,000 lives.

That is the real consequence of the Iranian nuclear threat. And while the US under Obama will certainly take no action, he does not wish to be seen openly working to promote Iranian nuclear weapons either. That is why vocal protests and outcries at this stage can make a real difference in how much interference and blackmail Obama will use against Israel.

And that is what we can do to help stop the Iranian nuclear threat. Ahmadinejad is a madman, Obama is not. He's cynical, cowardly and vulnerable to attacks on his public image. He wants a friendly public relationship with Israel and Jews. He does not want to face protesters or deal with marches. He does not want to be accused of aiding and abetting a would be genocidal mass murderer.

Speaking out, organizing and conducting a loud public campaign of protest, as the Bergson group did against FDR's silence on the Holocaust, can limit how much Obama can interfere with an Israeli strike against Iran. The countdown has begun and the time is now. And we can all be a part of it.

The press and the Democratic Party may be busy singing the funeral march for the GOP, but it's their own fate that should be concerning them instead.

With only 1 in 3 Nevada voters prepared to support Democratic Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid for reelection in 2010, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi caught lying and feuding with the CIA, the Democratic party doesn't look to be in very good shape.

And that isn't surprising because the Democratic party has invested everything in Obama, and now stands or falls with Obama. But despite the constant media barrage of pro-Obama propaganda, the general public finds Obama likable, but not very competent. The good news is it thought the same thing about Bush. The bad thing is that Obama has earned that rep in only a few months.

While Obama isn't up for reelection in 2010, his omnipresent media image has blanked out the rest of the party. And that is going to be painful for them in 2010.

To hold on to his credibility, the Democratic party needs to repeat Bush's trick of gaining seats during a midseason election. But the victories of 2006 and 2008 are likely to be rolled back in 2010, especially since the party shot its wad in 2008, stretching its lead Congress as far as it can. While the Republican party is flailing badly and Steele has gone from one mistake to another, as the opposition party, the GOP can profit by just showing up. Just showing up won't be enough to deal a serious setback to the Dems, but it showcases how precarious their position is.

Obama's endless world tour, the virtual dismantling of the American auto industry and the bailouts of his Wall Street backers have never been greeted by much enthusiasm, even by his own base. Obama has spent countless billions reward union members, bankers and terrorists-- not a combination to thrill anyone's heart.

Following the Rahm Model, Obama saw an economic crisis and began deficit spending like mad, promising Americans a solution, when he was in fact putting Americans deeply into debt to finance a socialist reconstruction of America. Most Americans won't understand that, but they will understand failure. Much as the media might try to put lipstick on a pig, the unemployment rates, closed storefronts on Main Street and all the other personal economic indicators that people relate to through experience and word of mouth, rather than media infotainment, will weigh against any fictional recovery.

2010 will be a shakedown for America and for Obama. It will be a chance for all those Americans dissatisfied or outraged by what is going on to register their vote of protest. To really make it count though, the Republican party will have to shake itself, get off the mat and begin to fight.

Obama's people and the press have worked to smear and marginalize the more active parts of the Republican party for precisely that reason. People who resist are "extremists". People who give in and let themselves be appointed ambassadors to China are "moderates". And if the GOP actually lets itself buy into that phony dichotomy, becoming the party of Meghan McCain and David Frum , then we will be in serious trouble.

A neutered Republican party would be almost worse than no opposition party at all. Headed for failure, the Obama knows his best bet is to negate public outrage by co-opting Republicans and making them complicit in his abuse of power. Charges directed against Obama driving two generations of Americans deep into debt to fund his own special interests and the socialist reconstruction of America have one best defense, and that is to make sure the Republicans were with him there all the way.

In "The End of Liberalism" by Theodore J. Lowi, the author argued that the beginning of the Second American Republic came about not simply because Social Liberals hijacked the United States government, but because Republicans like Eisenhower and Nixon not only failed to undo what had been done, but actually expanded it. By accepting and participating in the growth of socialism in America, Republicans dealt a decisive blow to Constitutional government.

In 2010 and 2012, if Republicans play to Obama instead of taking him on, the result will not simply be disastrous at an electoral level, but for the long term political future of America. It will mean giving up on opposing Obama's policies and surrendering the last vestiges of the Constitution. It will mean participating and taking the blame for his actions.

The Road to 2010 has to be paved by Obama's broken promises, by his wasteful deficit spending and by the fact that most Americans will be worse off then, than they were in 07 and 08. America let a celebrity be foisted on the oval office, but every TV show must sooner or later go off the air. And based on cable ratings alone, a steady diet of shows about Obama buying a burger or smiling at the camera, isn't playing nearly as well as the story of Obama's corruption and incompetence.

In 2010 Americans will have to choose between those two stories, between insipid rhetoric from a failed party, no longer able to run on a platform of change, and having very little hope left in its arsenal, and the exposure of the greed, corruption and irresponsible spending of the Democratic party from Obama on down.

It's the story that should have been told in 2008. In 2010 we'll have a chance to tell the story again, and this time get it... right.

Everyone, and by "everyone" I mean the denizens of Washington D.C.'s and Brussel's government buildings, agrees that we need a Palestinian state. Chiming in with their "Yes" votes are the dictators of a dozen Arab states who agree that the only thing that will fix the region is adding another Arab dictatorship to the place, and subtracting the region's one democracy.

But who actually needs a Palestinian state? Or rather a second Palestinian state. The first Palestinian state, commonly called Jordan, was carved out of the Palestine Mandate and equipped with a refugee Saudi royal family. Today Jordan exists mainly under the protection of the US and Israel, and its population of Palestinian Arabs is a seething mass of Muslim extremists currently enjoying a 30 percent unemployment rate, where the majority of the population supports Osama Bin Laden, at a higher percentage rate than even Pakistan.

But Jordan is practically heaven on earth compared to the Second Palestinian State that the Obama Administration is to determined to inflict on Israel.

Currently ruled by mutually hostile armed gangs loyal to either the Fatah or Hamas terrorist groups, Palestine 2.0 has already been a failed state for over a decade. Every attempt at foreign investment has failed. The ruins of industrial zones, greenhouses and even a casino, dot the landscape. Palestinian Arab Christians from overseas who returned to build up the economy fled quickly in the face of relentless shakedowns, kidnappings and militia gangs masquerading as law enforcement.

The vast majority of Palestinian Arabs work for two employers. The UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority... which in turn is funded by foreign donors. Work for the Palestinian Authority usually means belonging to a militia gang which is loyal to a particular figure in the PA leadership, who in turn passes that loyalty on to the current "government". With little to do, the gangs spend their free time dealing drugs, carrying out terrorist attacks and collecting protection money from their town's remaining stores.

For 17 years, Israel, America and just about every interested party has tried to build a Palestinian state. They provided weapons and training to build a modern Palestinian police force. They sent advisers and fortunes in economic aid, thousands per Palestinian Arab. They created industrial zones and transferred greenhouses. Billions in funds from the EU, America and various do-gooders were swallowed up to fund the lavish lifestyles of Arafat and his henchmen.

To those who argue that a Palestinian State will build regional stability, the rational person must ask, how in the world has any of this contributed to regional stability?

Year after year, the proposed Palestinian State has become a worse place. Given autonomy, its own military, political, legal and economic system-- "Palestine" has made the region more unstable than ever. Terrorism has increased. Violence has increased. General instability has increased. Proposing that more of this will stabilize the region is akin to a man setting fire to one piece of furniture after another in his living room, and claiming that when the entire room is on fire, it will be a safe place to live.

So I ask again, who needs a Palestinian state? If the Palestinian Arabs really wanted a state (a second state) in Gaza, the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem, they could have had it before 1967, when those territories were in Arab hands. Instead the PLO back then called for no Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel. As Clinton discovered to his chagrin at the end of his term, Arafat did not actually want a state and was not interested in accepting an Israeli offer that gave him 99 percent of what he wanted. Is it really any surprise that Hamas today follows the same exact party line?

And really why would they want a Palestinian state? If a state was actually created, the UNRWA would have to close up shop. A Palestinian state could no longer rely on foreign donors to fund the hundred thousand or so armed gangsters who form its "government" and its only real form of employment. And the same Muslim states who pass along "charity" to help fund the "martyr operations" that are behind much of the local terrorism would turn elsewhere.

Instead for 17 years the same tired opera has been playing in the region's one theater. First the world's statesmen and diplomats descend on Israel, crying that the only hope for the region's stability is a Palestinian state. Next the Israeli diplomats arrive with a generous territorial offer, counterbalanced by a second clause that asks that there be no more terrorism. That second clause is immediately ignored by everyone in the room.

Next the Palestinian Authority diplomats arrive demanding twice as much land, no more border security preventing terrorists from entering Israel, half of Israel's capital, contiguous borders that would cut Israel in half, the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from territories claimed by them... and finally the return of the "refugees", which is code for unlimited immigration from their proposed Palestinian State into Israel.

The Israelis make a counteroffer. The statesmen and diplomats accuse Israel of rejecting peace. The Palestinian Arabs begin carrying out terrorist attacks again (assuming they even bothered to stop during the negotiations). Israel bombs the terrorists. The statesmen and diplomats accuse Israel of perpetuating the cycle of violence, and urge everyone to go back to the negotiating table. By the time that happens a year later, the Palestinian Arabs have doubled their demands, and the whole "Cycle of Peacemaking" repeats itself all over again.

The "not so secret" secret here is that the Palestinian Arabs do not want a state or peace. 17 years of running the Palestinian Authority into the ground have shown how utterly incapable Fatah and Hamas are of running anything, besides armed gangs, mosques and occasional social services to their loyalist families... all funded from abroad.

The Palestinian ruling powers derive their authority from two forces

1. The Muslim desire to destroy Israel as an infidel state whose existence contradicts Islam. This keeps the money and arms flowing in to the different factions, as well as provides popular support by Arabs. Which is why no Palestinian leader will recognize and accept the existence of Israel. It is why Arafat negotiated out of one side of his mouth and ordered terrorist attacks out of the other. It is why after his death. his Fatah movement has lost credibility and popular support to Hamas due to its increasing inability to kill Israelis.

2. Western and Israel diplomats who keep trying to create a Palestinian state out of the bizarre notion that such a state would bring the terrorism to an end. Like all Dhimmi behaviors in regard to Islam, they ignore the fact that the short term goal of terrorism is terrorism. The long term goal of terrorism is to conquer and hold the territory of the terrorized. There is no room for the middle ground of compromise in that equation. It's either absolute power, or nothing at all.

Terrorism is practiced by armed gangs and movements who derive their power and support from being terrorists. Proposing that they stop being terrorists is a lot like walking into GM and suggesting that instead of making cars, they should make donuts and hand them out for free, so everyone will be happy.

Palestinian nationalism has always been a crock, a transparently phony justification for terrorism that has always come before nationalism. Palestine was never a country or a state. It was the name given by the Roman occupation forces to a region they were administering, a region far larger than modern day Israel. There was never an Arab Palestinian king or ruler until Arafat. There was never a separate country called Palestine. The Post WW1 Palestine Mandate in the 20th century was used to create two states, an Arab state, Jordan, and a smaller state, Israel.

Now the drive is on to create Palestine 2.0, despite the obvious fact that the Palestinian Arabs have done everything possible to prevent it from coming into being. Nearly two decades of terrorism have turned the endless rounds of peace negotiations into a joke. Half the Palestinian Authority is now ruled by the Iranian backed Hamas terrorist group, which insists it will never recognize or accept permanent peace with Israel. A state of affairs that never would have come into being, had Israel not completely withdrawn from Gaza in the first place.

So once again, who wants or needs a Palestinian state?

Israel did not come into being out of pity for the millions of Jews killed in the Holocaust. Nor did it come into being thanks to US aid or support. Both of those however are common myths.

The State of Israel was in place well before the Holocaust, in the form of an embryonic country of farmers who drained the swamps, businessmen who set up shops, journalists who printed newspapers, and soldiers who trained to protect and defend their homeland. When the UN recognized Israel, it simply accepted the fait accompli that Israel existed and was capable of taking care of itself, which it proved by fighting the armies of the surrounding Arab nations to a standstill. It did it without US military aid, which only came into the picture much later with the Kennedy administration. It did it, because the people of Israel genuinely wanted their own state and worked to make it happen.

By 1942, 17 years after the Palestine Mandate, the Jews of Israel had built a thriving country, from power generators to vast stretches of farmland, from a revived language to the Technion, created in 1924, which is considered one of the world's leading electrical engineering and computer science schools in the world.

17 years after Oslo, the Palestinian Arabs have built nothing but death and destruction. Worse yet they've taken everything that was given to them and turned it into either a weapon or a bribe. By every standard, they have failed to show their ability to build or run a functioning state. Not even the most liberally minded thinker can point to anything in the Palestinian Authority leadership that suggests that they're capable of running a functional state. Which is why that same species will naturally duck the question and begin blaming Israel instead.

And that highlights the real issue. The only reason for creating Palestine 2.0 is the destruction of Israel. It will not bring regional stability. It will not even bring local stability. It cannot even function unless its entire workforce is funded from abroad. It cannot even stop engaging in terrorism.

Palestine 2.0 is a Frankenstein's monster, with body parts from Shiite, Sunni and Marxist terrorists. It only knows how to do one thing and one thing alone, kill. It is not a natural creature, because no Palestinian state ever existed throughout history. It is an artificial state whose existence has only one purpose. The destruction of Israel.

And that answers our question at last. Who needs a Palestinian state? Someone who is either ignorant, foolish or needs to destroy Israel.

The Two State Solution is not a formula for any kind of stability or end to the violence. It is meant to take the violence to a whole new level. It is a formula for the destruction of Israel. 17 years of peacemaking by Israel has produced 17 years of terrorism by the Palestinian Arabs. Everything sown on the Palestinian Authority, from money to guns, from autonomy to infrastructure, have come up as dragon's teeth.

Palestine is not a state. It was never a state. It will never be a state. It is currently ruled by two factions who have both disowned a negotiated Palestinian state in favor of the destruction of Israel. It is not a country, it is a weapon.

Palestine is a gun aimed at the head of Israel with one goal, its destruction. Palestine is a gun aimed at the head of every Jew in the world, legitimizing the worst and ugliest kinds of bigotry. Palestine is an imaginary place given form as a vicious myth brainwashing generation after generation of Jordanian and Egyptian Arabs to call themselves Palestinians and kill and die in the name of perpetuating a second Holocaust, all for the glory of Allah, Mohammed, Marx, not to mention Saddam Hussein, Ahmadinejad, the House of Saud, and every cause and ruler with an interest in toppling Israel into the dust.

Palestine is death. It exists only as a form of living death by a population taught to see themselves as willing martyrs to the bomb belt from birth. It breathes death, it celebrates death, it teaches death and preaches death. It is the final ugly end of the hatred and cruelty bottled up in the Arab and Islamic dictatorships of the region. It is the true face of Islam and its shining reflection in the mirror of the Western press and diplomats is the true measure of their Dhimmism.

The Cult of Death in Palestine and the war against Israel is only a preview for the West of things to come. Palestine is not a place, it is hate and homicide boiled down into myth. Palestine is not only in Israel. It is in Paris and London. It is in Madrid and Detroit. It is in Sydney and Moscow. It is everywhere that the toxic brew of Muslim fanaticism and Arab nationalism flows. Its flag is the flag of death. Its constitution is a death warrant for every free nation. Its legislature is a smug coven of obese terrorist chieftains sending their followers off to death with the promise of virgin demons fornicating with them in Paradise.

Palestine 2.0 is a monster with only one purpose, to create Holocaust 2.0. That is who needs a Palestinian state. That is why the far left and the far right are both so hellbent on bringing one into being. Accepting the Two State Solution means accepting death. Rejecting it means embracing life.